Friday 22nd of August 2008 at 7:30pm
in Listullycurran Orange Hall, Dromore, County Down
Tickets only £7.50!
To obtain tickets or for more information please contact us via queensdua@hotmail.com
Friday 22nd of August 2008 at 7:30pm
in Listullycurran Orange Hall, Dromore, County Down
Tickets only £7.50!
To obtain tickets or for more information please contact us via queensdua@hotmail.com
South Antrim MP William McCrea has claimed that Sinn Fein has failed to force its agenda onto the Unionist population. The MP was commenting on Sinn Fein’s behaviour over the course of the last week leading up to the nomination of a First Minister and asserted that Sinn Fein’s attempts at brinkmanship had comprehensively failed.
Our colleagues in South Belfast DUP are holding a summer fundraising barbeque.
This will be held on Friday 13th June 2008 in the Sir. Thomas and Lady Dixon Park, Upper Malone Road starting at 7:30pm.
Speaking today the DUP MP said:
“These inquiries are fast becoming an industry. However we have to ask ourselves can we as a society really afford to be spending so much public money on these costly public inquiries that could be invested elsewhere? What about the strain being placed on police resources because of obligations to these inquiries? Important as the issues being dealt with are, just what are we as a community gaining by government spending £5million a month of public money on inquiries into our troubled past?
Coupled with that, we are about to embark upon 48 inquests, which the Chief Constable has described as “mini inquiries” into security-force-related deaths in Northern Ireland – that will mean even more money being poured into paying for what amounts to more public inquiries. These funds could be put to much better use and I am sure many will question whether such expenditure represents genuine value for money in the economic plight which exists at the moment.”
“In the bad old days of the Belfast Agreement, the system of government crafted by the UUP and the other pro-Agreement parties allowed ministers to simply trot off and do whatever they wished within their own departmental remits. Decisions such as that taken by Bairbre de Brun to close maternity services at the Jubilee Maternity Unit and move them into the Royal Victoria Hospital in the heart of her West Belfast constituency, or the decision to abolish the 11+ test, could not be reversed because of the architecture of the old agreement designed by the Ulster Unionists.
Government departments were treated as free-standing silos, independent of each other and ministers, knowing they were utterly unaccountable could do as they pleased. Thanks to the efforts of the Democratic Unionist Party that is no longer the case. Due to the changes which we secured at St. Andrews, Caitriona Ruane cannot initiate any changes to our education system without the consent of her colleagues in the Northern Ireland Executive.
The DUP has secured the future of academic selection in Northern Ireland. The recently leaked Sinn Fein memorandum on the issue admitted as much. We want to find a way forward on the vitally important issue of the future of our education system, but if Caitriona Ruane believes she can simply do whatever she likes on this matter, she is going to be greatly disappointed. She needs to get out of her “Free the Colombia Three”/West Belfast Festival-protest politician-mode and start behaving like a mature government minister trying to find a way forward on an issue of utmost importance.
The Trimble/Empey-days of ministers being in a position to initiate whatever policies they liked are over. Caitriona Ruane can bang her head against this brick-wall for as long as she likes, but sooner or later she will come to the realisation, as have many in her party, that she isn’t operating in a Belfast Agreement-style government: she needs the DUP to bring about any change in the education system and without the DUP she’s going nowhere fast on this issue.